


One General To Another

by Davechicken



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 09:27:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9882626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: Hux is captured.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Brief mention of suicide, no plan/act.

They’ve treated him more ‘nicely’ than he expected. A few too-sharp wrist-locks, a couple of bangs into doors or chairs or tables, but otherwise he’s ‘sound’ in body. As far as he knows they haven’t given him any mind-altering chemicals, and he’s yet to see anyone with a saber-hilt, so his mind is _probably_ his own, but he’s not going to bank on it. 

Frankly, they’re doing it all wrong.

But that’s their look out, and his benefit.

He feels naked without his blaster, more so than the affront that are his captors’ idea of _clothing_. He feels… _small_ , but he won’t let them know it. Back straight, shoulders level, jaw set. 

With no outward sign of the passage of time, he’s reliant on his own methods. By shutting down his other senses, he can count his heartbeats. It’s always level, because he keeps himself in condition. He learned long ago how to pace it, and how to control his body’s responses - at least, to the level it’s possible to do so.

Inout, pumpshunt. The sound in his ears, the feeling in his chest. 

It’s not meditation, but it’s close enough.

***

When he’s finally approached, it’s by someone on the other side of his large, transparisteel window. The other three walls are blank and flat, and only a small door to one side with a flap allows for access. A chair with rounded edges, bolted securely to the floor. He can’t injure himself on it, short of braining himself on it, but he could do that with a wall, too.

Hux isn’t sure he could do it. Perhaps with a ligature, or a sharp implement, but blunt force trauma is much more messy, painful, and uncertain. So maybe not. 

The woman who approaches looks different from the old holo-footage he mostly saw of her. Over the past three decades, she’s withdrawn more and more from the galactic eye, though her tendrils have been felt even in the Outer Rim. 

Even without her hair as she used to wear it, and with her face more lined, and her clothing less regal… there is no mistaking that this is Leia, once Princess of Alderaan, once a member of the Senate… and once mother of someone he knows all too well. 

She walks like she’s three feet taller than she is. He suspects that if the Wookie were around, she’d carry herself like she was taller than him. She has that energy that shorter women sometimes do, when they appear to have the power of a much larger person condensed like morning caf. Her expression brooks no argument, and he could see her as a drill instructor, barking commands in the misty morning air, forcing troopers through gruelling mud to get to their boots and porridge.

“So you’re the General I’ve heard so much about,” she says, in an accent that’s somewhere between Coruscanti elite, and Alderaanian burr.   


“I could say the same thing about you.”  


He does stand, though not to loom over her (even if it is a nice added bonus). Her whole being radiates Pissed-Offedness in a way Hux has rarely seen in a female, but then… the Order isn’t known for gender equality. Kylo’s respectful attitude towards women (which had always seemed so odd before) suddenly makes perfect sense. He’d had no choice but to see women as important, not around this figure.

“Let’s cut the crap, and you tell me where my boy is.”  


“You know I–”  


“ _I’m offering you a professional courtesy_ ,” she cuts him off, her tone utterly **deadly** in a way that might be erotic if he were at all into women, and not into said son. “I’m bringing that boy home one way or another. If you help me get him here sooner, then I’ll make sure you’re well looked after.”  


“He doesn’t want you.”  


“That’s what you think.”  


“It’s what I _know_ ,” he replies, which maybe he shouldn’t, but he wants to. “I know your son very well, and he doesn’t believe he _is_ your son, not any more. You renounced any claim to him when you sent him packing to be enslaved to the Jedi.”  


“I sent him to his _uncle_. To my _brother_.”  


“You abandoned a child who needed you. Who was afraid, and hurting. You shouldn’t have had a child if you weren’t prepared to–”  


“ _Now you listen here, you jumped up piece of Bantha-crap. I’ve been interrogated by stronger men than you, and they blew up my planet, and I still won, so if you–”_  


“I’m the one held prisoner,” he replies, both amused and alarmed by her sudden anger.   


“I was fighting this fight before you were a twinkle in your father’s eye!”  


“Yes, so isn’t it time you retired?”  


“I’ll–!” She stops, and it’s clear she’s two steps away from shooting him.   


No wonder Kylo’s temper is so quick to flare. No wonder at all.

“I’ll let you think about my offer,” she says, instead. “But don’t take too long. You won’t serve much other use to me, and then you’ll be forgotten about, other than meal runs.”  


“Please put Kylo in the next cell if you do ever catch him. I’d quite like to continue his company.”  


He knows Kylo won’t let himself be captured, except to break him out, so the taunt is an empty one. Leia Organa leaves, and Hux is sure he’s won round one. At least.

He does so hope Kylo tells her where to shove it, if he does rescue him. He also hopes he gets to watch.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes some time for her temper to cool to the point she comes back. Hux had never pushed Kylo for details, but he _had_ been curious. The odd question, or the odd… well-timed situational thing like a holo to spark a conversation…

It was _tactical_ , of course. Understanding the enemy. Know them, and you can defeat them. 

Later, it became… personal. He’d not truly given thought to how Kylo’s life must have been before, because the truth of the Order’s superiority and rightness were so infallible in his mind that someone choosing to come over had been a no-brainer. But the more he heard things, the more he’d realised it had been an ungodly mess: love, fear, disgust, isolation. 

Worst of all was how Kylo would let his lips curl in disgust one minute, cursing out their actions, and then barely any time later… the shadow on his cheeks, the thinning of his lips… It was complicated. He hated them, but he also still… loved them. And he wanted something - a past - which he hadn’t got, and now never could. But he still _wanted_ it, and he couldn’t reconcile himself to the truth that it would never happen. Short of inventing time travel, and smacking Leia Organa and Han Solo around the heads… they’d hurt him, and it was irrevocable.

It was a source of no small concern for Hux, that lingering attachment. Hate would have been easier, and would have been entirely understandable. Disappointment, mingled with self-loathing… a mind caught between ‘they were right about me’ and ‘they didn’t treat me right’… 

Hux still isn’t entirely sure that Kylo will manage to keep the break. It wasn’t clean the first time, and surely that’s what Organa is betting on. She’ll be plucking at those apron strings, trying to trip her once-son back into her control. 

More than one night has Hux woken in a cold sweat, certain he’d lost him. Certain the aching child would never let the man stand free, and would hobble him back to tears and recriminations. Though he told the woman Kylo didn’t want her, the truth is more complicated than that.

She doesn’t speak the next time, not for a long moment. Their eyes lock, and Hux doesn’t stand. He lifts his chin, and now they’re staring, he can’t look away. To look away would be to admit weakness, and he is _anything but weak_. 

“You seem very close to my son.”  


Shit. Well. Yes, he did tip his side-hand there, didn’t he? “He doesn’t consider himself your son.”

“If that boy wants to go around saying he’s my father’s, then he’s mine.”  


There is a logic in that, it’s true, but still… Hux refuses to concede the point. 

“Is…” And now she wavers.  


He isn’t feeling generous, so he doesn’t assist. She looks angry again, and boy, this one would never have made a Jedi, if what Kylo’s told him is true. He thankfully didn’t have the ‘pleasure’ of meeting his father, but he’d heard enough. There was never going to be anything calm and settled about their child. 

Hux catches himself wondering what the uncle is like. The stories paint him as a distant, weak, single-minded man incapable of compromise, but there will be some reporting bias, of course. He must be different, or else he’d be Dark too, surely?

“Is he okay?”  


“He’s perfectly fine.”  


“Is…” This is killing her.   


Hux considers cutting her out entirely, but then… she does love Kylo, or her version of him. Even now. Hux would like to think, if the tables were turned, that she’d answer his questions on this topic.

“He’s perfectly healthy. Much taller than you remember, most likely. Powerful and determined. He’s brave, strong, and happy.” Without you. With me.  


“I see. Thank you. Does he… does he ever… think of us?”  


Hux’s lips twist. “Yes. He wishes… you had cared more for who he actually _was_. It killed him when you shipped him away, and I doubt he will ever properly forgive you for that, but he does… have some regret.”

Maker, but her face… she looks so like him. Seeing her in pain is difficult, and it’s a strange vulnerability in him, to be affected by her sorrow. He’s normally immune to others’ distress, except, of course, for Kylo’s.

“I… am glad he had someone looking out for him, at least,” she says, and then nods. “Can I arrange for anything to make your incarceration more comfortable?”  


“The access code to the door?”  


Organa rolls her eyes. “I was thinking more a room with a bed.”

“…that would be an improvement, yes.” He won’t thank her for something he should already have.  


***

The problem with meeting the enemy is you kind of get to see they’re… people. 

People. Like him. People with vastly stupid ideas about how the galaxy should be run, but people underneath those ideas. 

He should want her to suffer, so long as it doesn’t lead to him being punished. He should want to use the leverage he has to properly make his life comfortable (or easier to escape), instead of give up morsels of information through some misguided pity. 

But Hux doesn’t want to treat Kylo’s life and happiness and experiences as a commodity, as a currency to trade in. Kylo means too much to be that, and Hux respects him.

Sooooo.

This cell has a bed, which has one sheet, and Hux has no desire to take his life with it, but it’s nice to know the option is there. He sits down on it, and it’s not much worse than ones he had as a younger man. Admittedly, it was a room and not a cell, but there’s plenty of similarities.

He removes his boots, and lies facing the wall. He pushes his forehead into the metal, and imagines Kylo’s on the other side. Imagines they’re so close, and that he isn’t going to be annoyed with Hux for talking to his mother. 

Would he? Or would he not mind?

His lips are chafed from all the biting, and the poor water they have here. He pushes his head harder in, until his nose meets metal, and breathes. 

There’s no reasoning with her, of course. She’s too old, too stubborn, too set in her ways. She sees the Order as the Empire, though it’s nothing like the same. She sees the past, and they are the future. There is no way for both Generals to exist in Kylo’s life, and he worries if he comes… if he comes, he’ll be faced with a choice.

He’s worried which will be the one he picks.


End file.
